"None of Us are Party Planners" - An Interview with Three Floyds' Barnaby Struve

Monday, March 14th was a busy day at Three Floyds Brewery in Munster, Indiana. In addition to the production of a collaboration beer with Indianapolis' Sun King Brewing (more on that later), the brewery was visited by two film crews and yours truly.

After things settled down for the day I was lucky enough to spend a few minutes with Three Floyds' Head Brewer and long-time employee Barnaby Struve. While our conversation touched on quite a few long-term brewery issues, the section below touches on something a bit more immediate: Dark Lord Day.

Tickets for the event go on sale this Saturday, March 19th. In the meantime, we hope to hold you over.


Why the changes this year? What went wrong last year, and what do you think needed to be fixed?

“That’s a Pandora’s box. The reason why we’re having changes this year is – every year we have changes. This thing grew organically. None of us are party planners but now we’ve been forced to do that because so many people come to the brewery every year.

There were 25 people the first year, 50 at the next, 200 at the next, and then 4000 and on and up, so all of a sudden we were like, ‘Wow, we’ve got to get a bunch of chemical shitters for these people, what do we do?’

The good people of Munster don’t mind us doing this but it cannot grow exponentially every year. We’re a small regional brewery that has a small parking lot and a little bit of space in our warehouse and that’s it.

It’s funny – you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. People want to come, but then they complain that there are lines. We’re like, ‘We’re going to try to manage the crowd better by making it a ticket only event so that also we know A) how many people are going to come and with that knowledge we can have the right amount of food for everyone, we can manage lines and crowds better, and B) it’ll be safer – it’ll be just a better event.

It’s so hard – we’re trying really hard to do the best thing we can to organize this thing. In order to have it go from year to year we have to limit the size. Munster is going to put up with only a certain amount of drunken revelry every year. There were somewhere around 10 to 12 thousand people here last year. We can’t have 20,000 this year and 30,000 the next year. We’re just a little brewery.

Everyone will complain about it, but they don’t realize that before the sun comes up the next day we’ve got a whole team of people out here cleaning up our entire neighborhood so that we can try to be good neighbors to the people that we live with the other 364 days a year.

I love people coming here and I want them to have a good time and I want them to bring beer and to trade beers. What other event – in previous years – what other event has been free where you could bring your own beer, you could bring your own food, the music is free. I don’t know of any other beer event ever that’s like that.

So this year, for the people that really truly care about it and that can get tickets – we just want to make it better for them. We want to make it more user friendly, we want to make sure that the longevity of the event is insured, and we want to make sure that everyone can get their beer, have a good time, trade with their friends, try Sun King beers, try Russian River beers and all the other breweries that we’re friends with and send us stuff. It’s fun. That’s the intent anyway, but sometimes people get a little upset.”


There’s this sort of feeling that Three Floyds tells you what they want to tell you—

“Absolutely! What company doesn’t?”

Is that fair?

“Is it fair? What I think, #1 – I love the fact the people care enough to obsess about it, but we have to control information because look at how many threads there are on whatever websites about Nick’s personal life or what we’ve got going on or what we’re making or releasing and all this other stuff. You have to control your message, especially when people want to know everything about it and everyone’s talking. There’s one thread that we printed out the other day that was, ‘How come I can’t find Gumballhead?’, and the response was, ‘These guys just sit around and smoke weed all day, and then when they want to make money they come in and brew a batch of beer and then sell it.’ They don’t understand that we’ve grown by over 30% every year and because... I actually just typed up a state of the brewery address to let people know what we’ve done growth-wise so they can understand us. Because as our name grows, the demand grows, and that’s actually exceeding our growth. You can only do so much. Like with regards to Dark Lord Day – it’s like when was the last time you and your nine friends held a party for 12,000 people? We’re honestly trying to do the best we can, and I think that people should not necessarily always focus on what is negative about the event, and try to come and have a good time. And if you don’t like it… I’m sorry. We’re doing our absolute best, honest-to-god.”

You don’t want to be the guy that’s like, “If you don’t like it don’t come,” but on the other hand it’s like—

“No, and I would never say that. We’ve been having weekly meetings and the sole focus of our weekly brewery meetings for the last probably three months has been just Dark Lord Day planning. Like, ‘How are we going to make it better this way in terms of how the space is organized?’ ‘How can we get the toilets to not overflow?’ ‘How can we cut down on lines?’ ‘Where can we have more food stations?’ ‘How can we make it safer?’ ‘What’s going on with this?’ ‘What’s going on with that?’ A lot of work goes into it and we like having the event. It’s the one day that we retail beer instead of wholesale it. Everyone thinks that we’re driving around in Mercedes or something but I’ll tell you what, last year’s Dark Lord Day paid for is a new 100 ton chiller that we’ve got outside that actually helps us produce more beer, which allowed for 30% growth last year. So this year, what are we going to do with it? We’re going to put a new roof on our building. And a new roof is going to cost us a ton of money.

It’s not as though we’re like, ‘HA HA HA! We are lording over the beer and we don’t want you to have this and we don’t want you to have that.’ It’s just so bizarre that people care that much.

I think it’s great, and I get maybe – it’s like a 50/50 response when I go out to events. Like some people are like, ‘Why don’t you guys do this, why don’t you guys do that?’ And they’re a little bit negative about it but – you know the dissenting voice is always the loudest. The other 50% are like, ‘Guys, I understand. I love what you do. It’s really great that you’re doing this. Don’t listen to those other people.’ And that’s what I would rather focus on is the positives out there. We’re putting a lot of beer out there. And the people that do get it? It’s great. And I want those people to keep coming and drinking the beer and if people want to be negative about it, I think they should maybe focus on something else, get another hobby besides drinking.

That was a really long rant.


That’s the thing, I don’t want this to be negative, I don’t want to say, ‘Hey if you don’t like it, don’t come, don’t drink our beer’. That’s not my intention or my message at all – we wouldn’t be where we are today without all these people’s support. And we rely on them – they’re our customers so they’re the people we want to make happy. It’s just that if we were a big giant conglomerate – a huge brewery that could take care of everyone’s needs at the United Center – no one would want to come. People like us because we’re a small regional brewery and we make limited edition beers. If we did that, if we grew, if we got a bunch of revenue and grew by 300% and had Dark Lord Day at the United Center or Soldier Field or somewhere where everyone could come get Dark Lord, no one would come, because then we would have sold out.

So it’s like this double edged sword that’s really bizarre to me, and I think – like I said – the loudest voice is the dissenting one, and for every person that complains, we have hundreds of people coming through our pub every day that really really enjoy the food that we make and really like the atmosphere and people that we are. We’re not a bunch of aloof, snooty fuckers.”

There were rumors that you considered moving the event to convention centers, was that actually a consideration or—

“It’s always been a consideration. But we can’t do it because of the archaic beer laws in this country. Like I said – we work really really hard to make the event accessible to as many people as possible. So that being said, of course we’ll look into different locations, but we can’t because we can’t sell our beer off the premises. The fact is that, yeah, the beer is $15 a bottle, but it’s been that way since we put it out. We’ve not raised the price at all, but it’s also an incredibly expensive beer to make. If we were to do that, and make short lines, and go to the convention center we would probably have to be upwards of $60-$70 because we’d have to sell it to a distributor, they’d have to sell it back to us – so it’s just – right now, this is our little brewery, and this is what we’re doing.”


A correction - Barnaby Struve's title within Three Floyds Brewing Company is Vice President, not Head Brewer as reported above.

The Hoosier Beer Geek Six Pack: Stacey McGinnis, Front Operations Manager, Tyranena Brewing Company

In helping put together the brewery list for Saturday's Brewers of Indiana Guild Winterfest, we reached out to a number of Indiana sister state breweries. Because of past experience, we thought it might also make sense to look to Missouri and Wisconsin and see if we could find any interest from breweries there.

We were quite happy when the folks at Tyranena responded. We reviewed Tyranena's The Devil Made Me Do It! Imperial Porter back in March of 2009, giving it a very solid 4.3 mug score - so we know that the brewery is very capable.

We look forward to seeing Tyranena's beer in bars and liquor stores in Indiana, and we thank Stacey for taking the time to contribute to our Six Pack series.

1) Who are you and where do you work?

My name is Stacey McGinnis, aka the "Devourer of Men's Souls", and I’m the Front Operations Manager for Tyranena Brewing Company in Lake Mills, Wisconsin. I’m a Scorpio, my favorite color is currently Lucite's 54D-5 'Silent Night' (and incidentally that is also the same color blue of my living room walls), I’m a big fan of ellipses (…) and I prefer sans serif fonts to serif (especially Times New Roman… ick). :-)

Before we get too far… let me answer a few other frequently asked questions.

How do you pronounce Tyranena? Tie•rah•nee•nah… just like it looks. Or, if it’s easier to remember, like two women’s first names: “Tyra” Banks, “Nina” Simone.

And what does it mean? Tyranena is the indigenous name for Rock Lake, the body of water for which Lake Mills takes its name. (Yes, our founding fathers were incredibly creative… the lake had a rocky shore – hence Rock Lake – and there were two mills on that lake – presto, Lake Mills.) Our brewery is located just a stone’s throw from the oldest known civilization in Wisconsin at Aztalan. Tyranena is believed to be a name passed down from that ancient culture to the Native Americans that inhabited this area prior to the settlers arriving in the early 1800’s.

So where is Lake Mills? Lake Mills is located between Madison and Milwaukee on I-94; about 25 minutes from the east side of Wisconsin’s capitol city and 45 minutes west of its largest metropolitan area.

What does a Front Operations Manager do? When I accepted my position at Tyranena, I was the only full-time employee other than Rob Larson, our founder and brewer. It took a while for Rob to come up with my title; I think it was nearly a year before I had business cards! Basically, it boils down to a bit of a joke… There are glass doors that divide our lobby, Tasting Room and offices from the brewhaus, bottling line and warehouse. Rob says I’m in charge of everything going on in “front” of those glass doors… but basically I have my hands in everything except for brewing beer. I also try, with limited success, to stay off the bottling line, though occasionally I have to fill in or help out with special packaging.

I’ve been with the brewery in various capacities for 7 years now. My servitude entails working closely with Rob (a full-time job in and of itself) as well as with our many events, staff, customers, vendors, beer geeks, distributors and the general public at-large.

And since Jessie will be pouring with me at Winterfest, it’s only fair for me to out her here as well... Jessie Nimm, Tyranena’s Beer Ambassador (aka salesperson), has been slaving for the brewery for about 3-1/2 years. Her responsibilities include working with our network of distributors on pricing, promotional programs, and brand placement at the retail level. With a very strong sales and relationship-building background, Jessie has helped the brewery grow significantly. Oh and she’s a Capricorn, her favorite color is blue and her favorite style of beer is either an IPA or Porter.

2) How did you get into craft beer? Were you a craft beer drinker before you took a job working for the brewery?

Actually, I was not only NOT a craft beer drinker 7 years ago when I began working at the brewery… I wasn’t even a BEER drinker. I was THAT GIRL… you know the one that says, with a wrinkled-up nose, “I don’t drink beer.” Funny how things turn out! Fact is I simply didn’t like what I knew as “beer” back then. I’d grown up thinking beer consisted of just light-bodied lagers; I had no idea of the myriad of flavors that just a few simple ingredients could create.

So with that in mind, it’s fairly ironic that I started bartending part-time at Tyranena, which has a tasting room that serves nothing but beer, in January of 2003. My first day walking into the Tasting Room for training was the first time I’d ever set foot in this or any other brewery! But it was nearly love at first sight. And as such I started working every Wednesday and nearly every other day I could get behind that bar… So when it came time for Rob to hire a full-time helper, well, it was me. I’m sure that this is something Rob regrets at least five days a week but he just can’t seem to get rid of me now!

Truth be told, Tyranena has a certain something about it… I felt it right away. There’s a warm kind of comfort (regardless of Rob’s personality) when you walk through our doors that you just don’t get at every “bar”. Not to mention that we are incredibly lucky to have a great group of regulars and fans, amazing customers and a great staff to boot! If ever you get a chance to swing through Lake Mills, I highly recommend it stopping by the brewery!

3) Right now you're distributing in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois - what is it about Indiana that got the brewery's interest as a possible candidate for expansion? And are you looking anywhere else? If you are looking somewhere else, is it an Indiana vs wherever else situation?

Hmm… Honestly, Indiana seemed like a natural progression… We moved into Chicago last spring; it seems only fitting to creep on over toward the Hoosier state next! But really there are a lot of pieces to the decision-making puzzle. First, there should be some interest… both from consumers and from potential distributors. And, of course, we have to become amateur-experts on each state’s liquor law when we decide to make the leap across another state line. As it turns out, Indiana has reasonably uncomplicated regulations and also does not require exorbitant annual permits or fees from a brewery to distribute there. So that’s a huge plus for IN!

But our decision will mainly be based on finding the right fit with a distributor in the Indiana market. Most states have laws making it a real headache to transfer brands from one distributor to another. In all honesty, WE don’t want to cause that kind of upheaval in changing brands anyway. It’s better for all parties concerned that we make the right choice from the onset. We’re a small brewery. We don’t have a huge salesforce or fleet; we have a decrepit van, a burgundy toaster (aka a Honda Element) and one salesperson that currently flits between highways and airports in three states. We rely heavily on our distributors to be an extension of our business, to BE our eyes, ears, arms and legs in a market. So it’s very important that we find a connection with a distributor. We simply have to be on the same page on a variety of levels. So we do a lot of research before making any promises. And that’s where we are right now… researching. Hopefully, it’ll all work out!

As far as opening distribution in other states, we have also been contemplating heading into Missouri, however, it’s not really an either-or kind of situation. When the time is right, we will take Tyranena where we feel it will be sold, consumed, marketed and appreciated appropriately!

4) You have what appears to be a very nice facility - did the brewery start there? What's the history of Tyranena Brewing? Who's behind the founding of the brewery?

Yup. She’s a beaut! The brewery is exactly where it has always been… same city, same location since established in 1999. Tyranena was built from the ground up to be a brewery while many of our colleagues in Wisconsin have had to retrofit their breweries into existing buildings. Not that that necessarily impedes their ability to make great beer, but it can make things more difficult to grow. We are situated on over 7-acres… plenty of room to make beer, throw a Frisbee and walk the dogs. In regards to our equipment, our brewhaus and bottling line originally came from Ambleside Brewing in Minnesota; the equipment was only about a year-old when Rob purchased and moved it to Lake Mills to start Tyranena. I guess it’s not quite as modern as it used to be… but it does the trick!


As I briefly mentioned before, Rob is our founder and brewer… he is the man behind the brewery. Tyranena is his brainchild. But you can’t forget the women, dogs and new guy that work diligently for the man behind Tyranena Brewing Company… We’re pretty proud of our team. (More of a slightly dysfunctional family than a team… but…) We have just four full-time employees, including Rob. Six if you count the dogs… We all do our part to make the brewery what it is today, for better or worse!

Why did Rob start the brewery, you might ask? One day back in ’97 or ’98, Rob found himself with a love of drinking good beer, passion for his homebrewing kit and, miraculously, unemployed with a chunk of capital. What to do, what to do? So in addition to earning his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the UW Madison, he went on to pursue a brewer’s certificate from the Siebel Institute in Chicago and to study abroad at Brewlab in Sunderland, England. And soon after, Tyranena was born!

5) What is it about Tyranena's beers that sets them apart from other beer?

What’s special about Tyranena? Other than we produce high quality beers that are thought-provoking, creative and unique in a variety of flavors to suit diverse palates… Wait. You need more? J

Well, we believe our beers have fantastic flavor profiles, but each year-round and seasonal beer brewed at Tyranena also has a unique name specific to the history and folklore of the surrounding area or refers to something quintessentially “Wisconsin”. These legendary labels have become a trademark of our establishment and are part of the distinctive charm of our beers.

And then there’s our Brewers Gone Wild! Series… full of beers that are big, bold and ballsy. They are incredible; each with amazing flavor, body and charisma. We’ve had a lot of people ask where the names for THESE beers come from… certainly not from folklore. The names come from somewhere deep in Rob’s brain. (Scary, I know.)

Our Brewers Gone Wild! Series beers are big and geared towards aficionados. They have crazy, in-your-face flavors to match their bold and sometimes daring names. Obviously, the names also grab your attention but, in case you are wondering, they are not meant to be offensive… The first printer we worked with on these labels didn’t agree. The company actually ended up declining our business because of the names of the beers! (They really frowned upon printing “HopWhore” even though the Federal government had no problem approving the label.) We know the names are definitely out there and more extreme than anything else we've ever done. But... that's exactly the point. So are the beers.

6) Which Tyranena beer is your favorite? And does the brewery generally roll out the whole lineup (6 regular, 4 seasonal, and the Brewers Gone Wild series) when moving into a state? And what sort of timeline are you looking at?

I really enjoy our porters, especially the imperial barrel-aged ones! (I’m also looking forward to the release of our new Spring seasonal, Down ‘n Dirty Chocolate Oatmeal Stout.) Who’s Your Daddy?, which was our very first Brewers Gone Wild! release, was pure magic. I have just one lonely bottle in the back of my refrigerator that I am saving for a special occasion… like when I get married… or upon the birth of my first child. That’s how great this beer is.

We hope that a new distributor will take on our full lineup, including our year-round flavors, new seasonal lineup (there are now 6 flavors) and the Brewers Gone Wild beers. But that decision is ultimately made by the distributor. I imagine that they take into consideration the demand and interest for the brands when ordering so… speak up Hoosier Beer Geeks! Be sure to let your favorite liquor store and watering hole know what flavors YOU want to see in your market. It makes a difference!

And lastly, in regards to a timeline for our brands hitting Indiana taps and shelves… well, all I can say is we hope sometime soon? (With a question mark, of course.) The appropriate “time” decision will ultimately be arrived at by the brewery and whoever our distributor turns out to be… assuming, of course, all parties come to terms. Then it will be a matter of when we can schedule releases, transit, marketing, product availability, license approval and a whole slew of other things.

The Hoosier Beer Geek 6 Pack - Jonathan Surratt of Beermapping.com

Finding good beer while away from home is a problem a lot of beer geeks face. Unfamiliar surroundings often lead the beer desperate to drinking beer that doesn't meet the high quality standards that we've become accustomed to.

Luckily we've got a friend on the internet who's looking out for us. Jonathan Surratt, a web developer and hard core craft beer enthusiast based out of Chicago, has created beermapping.com, a Googlemaps based database application that aims to locate and chart out all locations where good beer can be found.

Hoosier Beer Geek recently contacted Jonathan to see what inspired the beermapping project, and to find out more about the beermapping project.

What inspired beermapping?

Jonathan Surratt: I started out building and running a beer based community site in North Carolina when I was living there (http://beerinator.com). I still run that site, and it has not changed its focus, although I do not update the front page articles anymore since I don't live there. I have devoted my time mostly at this point to The Beer Mapping Project.

I was inspired to work with google maps to map beer locations when my wife and I moved to Chicago. I wasn't totally sure where everything was in relation to where I was so I decided to give the google mapping api a shot.

What do you hope to accomplish with beermapping?

JS: My goal for beermapping is to promote craft beer by presenting tourists with good beer locations to visit. I don't really view the maps as tools that locals will always get the most out of. I think they are most helpful for people who are traveling to a new area. It may sound corny, but I feel that if I do my best to promote craft beer, then hopefully the industry will only get better.

How long has the beermapping project been going on?

JS: I have been setting up maps based around beer since October of 2005. The url was purchased in December of that year. I think I finished mapping all states with breweries and brewpubs in late December or very early January of 2006. The forums and review system are fairly new. I finished up the review system only three or four months ago.

How much time do you think you've devoted to beermapping? Does the site require a lot of everyday maintenance?

JS: I have probably put a few hundred hours into the website. I spend most days tweaking code, approving locations and adding new locations myself. Most of the time I spend on the site these days is researching places that have been submitted by my users. More often than not, they haven't done a complete search and they have submitted a location that is already in the database. Also, there are lots of bars submitted that are simply not craft beer bars or they aren't bars that have a focus on a good/craft beer selection.

How much money have you spent on beermapping?

JS: If I were to guess, I would say that I have probably spent a few hundred dollars on it. I spend somewhere around fifteen bucks a month for the server hosting. I do all the coding myself, often using open source (re: free) software solutions. I am currently in negotiations with a graphic designer about a new logo for t-shirts and possible sticker printing so that will run me a bit of money, but hopefully I'll be able to recoup that through t-shirt sales.

I make approximately 6 to 10 dollars a month through the google ad pages, so I am in no way profiting from this venture at the moment. In the future, I may entertain some sort of advertising campaign and I will be doing t-shirt sales.

I've noticed that in the about page you don't give your name - is there a reason for that?

JS: I have never felt that this project was about me. I feel like the people who use my site are a very large portion of the site itself. I have users that email me regularly after their travels, telling me of their experiences with certain pubs and breweries. The Beer Mapping Project was started by me, but thankfully it has grown beyond me and I think it includes many other users at this point.

I haven't looked at my about page recently (whoops) and I'm sure it still talks about there being one person behind the wheel, but I probably should consider updating that in the near future.

All of us at Hoosier Beer Geek offer our thanks to Jonathan and all those who've put in work at beermapping.com. It's a project done out of love for craft beer, and that's certainly something we all can appreciate. Beermapping is certainly worthy of a five mug rating.